The General Election had just thrown up the first hung Parliament since 1929, Prime Minister Ted Heath failed to convince the Liberals to come to his aid, thus paving the way for Harold Wilson to spring to power.

Bob Latchford became Britain’s costliest footballer when he left Blues for Everton for £350,000 and that saggy, cloth cat, loved by Emily, Bagpuss first aired on BBC1.

They have won just the one meaningful trophy since... and that was 34 years ago.

And former Molineux favourite Steve Kindon says the game is all the poorer for it.

Kindon didn’t play in the showpiece. He travelled with the rest of the squad for their date against a swashbuckling Manchester City, who had the big names and the flair players.

“I was in the squad, I travelled with the team and after the match we had a bloody good night out at the Hilton Hotel!” he recalls. “My best pal was John Richards, who was an integral part of the side. He got the winning goal and Kenny Hibbitt got the other.

“The funny thing was that once we saw their line-up we were very, very, very confident of beating them.

“Bell was their only midfielder... and he was a fantastic player, of course, but we knew Mike Bailey would rule.

“While we knew they would be a threat going forward, we were very confident. We thought it was a poor side Ron Saunders had picked.

“It proved to be a good game and City played well. But not as well as we did.”

Steve Kindon playing for Wolves against Leicester in 1972

Kindon, now 63, and still a successful after dinner speaker who more than a decade ago presented Villa’s Gareth Barry with the Midland Football Writers’ Young Player of the Year Award, sat alongside fellow guest Brian Clough in an Edgbaston hotel.

As a footballer he spent five years at Wolves in the Seventies, sandwiched between two spells at Burnley.

He is a romanticist. Wolves and Burnley should still be winning trophies.

“There’s three trophies can be won every year and there’s 92 clubs,” he says.

“In 1960 Burnley won the First Division, in 1961 Tottenham won it, in 1962 Ipswich won it having been in the Second Division the year before. Since then I could probably name 15 clubs who have won the top award: Leeds, Everton, Manchester City, Nottingham Forest, Arsenal, Chelsea... you can go on and on. They talk about the Premier League being the best. It isn’t. It is the best marketed.

“When I was a kid we used to say our league was worth winning because anybody could win it.

“But in Spain if Real Madrid don’t win it Barcelona do, in Italy it was always down to three clubs: AC Milan, Inter or Juventus. Germany had four or five clubs, Holland was Feyenoord or Ajax, and the joke of them all was the Scottish League – Celtic or Rangers.

“The Premiership has been going for 21 years now. Blackburn Rovers, once, Manchester City, once, Chelsea three times, Arsenal three times and Manchester United 13 times.

“We have become Scotland, we have become Spain, we have become Italy.

“No longer can a team that wins promotion look to win the Premiership.

“So teams like Wolves, Leicester, Birmingham, Bolton, Blackburn and Burnley have to cut their cloth accordingly. They are not going to win the big trophies any longer.

“I think that’s sad but then a lot of people support Manchester United and they’re not sad about it. A lot of people support Chelsea, who won the title in 1955. They are a big city club but I can remember them in the Second Division.

“Then along comes a billionaire from Russia. If you’re a Chelsea supporter you love him. I can remember Manchester City being in the Second and even Third Divisions.

“Along comes a sheikh. Five years earlier City fans were critical of Chelsea and Roman Abramovich. It was: ‘That’s not what football should be about in England’. That’s until you get a sugar daddy of your own.

“If a multi-millionaire sheikh came along to Villa Park, Molineux, St Andrew’s or The Hawthorns then those fans would suddenly say: ‘There’s not a lot wrong with this game’.

“So there’s a certain amount of envy but it wouldn’t have happened in my day because the game was fairer. Club chairman, John Ireland at Wolves or Bob Lord at Burnley, were local businessmen.”

Kindon says the money men have a different agenda to the fans nowadays.

“Sam Allardyce spoke this week of what he called West Ham’s ‘dreadful’ spell of conceding six goals at Manchester City and five goals at Nottingham Forest in the cups. He said it wasn’t important because they’ve won their last four league games, ‘and that’s what counts’.

“But I saw a letter from a West Ham supporter in the paper who said he remembered Trevor Brooking scoring a header against Arsenal to win them the FA Cup (1980) and he remembered Bobby Moore winning them the FA Cup and the Cup Winners’ Cup in 1965.

That fan wrote: ‘I won’t remember these four games that Allardyce is talking about!’

“Club chairman and money men want to remain in the Premier League – that’s the be-all and end-all.

“Because that’s where the money is.

“What you have now is fans wanting to go to Wembley while chairman and managers are saying it isn’t that important.

“Ask Wigan or Birmingham fans how they feel having actually won a cup but then dropping to play in the Championship.